Chapter 26 #2
Training. What I’ve heard about his sister, Deitra, and her unsanctioned legion flits through my mind.
When Desmond straddles my hips, I hide my stuttered breath against his quilt. He’s sitting right on top of me, his crotch against my ass, but puts his weight on his knees on either side of me.
“Hold still,” Desmond orders.
I gasp as a sharp, astringent liquid runs across the slash. “Gods, that hurts!” I’m no stranger to pain, but the hot burn of the liquid makes me want to scream. “Tell me about your training?” I ask, desperate for a distraction.
“I don’t like to talk about it,” he says, sharper than before. “Going after Olin’s tomb has given me a break from the war. One that I desperately needed.”
Everything still hurts. Closing my eyes, I whimper as the pain-relieving tonic kicks in, making my insides warm and fuzzy.
Desmond’s legs firmly squeeze me, his feet warm against my thighs. I hum as I imagine him squeezing even harder, the tonic drowning out the pain until all that’s left is an awareness of him and every place we touch.
He moves slightly, putting just a bit more pressure against my ass. Fuck. That feels good. He didn’t sense that through me, right?
I hide my face in his quilt, praying he doesn’t know how much he’s affecting me. Maybe I shouldn’t be feeding my fantasies, since my every reaction will be seen and felt by my boss who I. . .
The boss who I what? Respect? Find attractive? Gods, I am attracted to him, miserably so.
A sharp needle dips into my skin, and I gasp. I clench my hands and hiss as the needle pierces me again. The lascivious thoughts vanish, snuffed out by pain that even the tonic can’t dull.
“So it’s true?” I ask through gritted teeth. “The fae are militarized?”
There’s a moment of silence before he responds. “Yes.”
Earlier this autumn, I might’ve been perturbed. Now, I hope that the fae might one day be free. “Do you use glamour as a weapon?”
Another painful stab. I bury my grimace into his quilt and inhale the scent of cedar and sandalwood. Like his arms around me when we shared a room in Hawthorn Inn.
“Soldiers learn to win by any means necessary, Cynthia. That doesn’t mean I enjoy using it.”
I bite the quilt as the needle digs in again. Gods, when will the tonic kick in again? I try to focus on his free hand that’s splayed against the small of my back as he finishes the sutures, because being turned on is better than being in pain. It’s not working this time.
“It doesn’t fit you,” I murmur.
“What doesn’t?”
“Prince of Death. Why does Avedor call you that when you’re so. . .” I flounder for the right word because I have felt violence within him, but so infrequently that the appellation doesn’t make sense. “Rational,” I finally decide.
“We’re done.” The words are biting, dismissive. He moves off of me and heads to his armoire.
Of all the questions he could’ve refused to answer, that was the one he picked? I sit up, holding my bustier to my chest.
He unfolds a tunic and wordlessly offers it.
I put it on and leave the bustier bunched up in my hand. It has a higher neckline than what he often wears, concealing my chest as I stand before him. I suspect he chose it for that very reason.
“How do you feel?” he asks me.
“Alright.” My back feels tight from the sutures, but the stinging pain is already lessening. So is the dullness from my headache, but there’s a weightlessness to my body in its place.
“Be careful. The tonics were strong, and I wouldn’t want you to—”
I take one step, and the world lurches. My stomach drops into my hips.
Desmond catches me, one hand cradling my head as he helps me into the chair. “Don’t make me carry you to bed again,” he says, unusually husky.
My gaze snaps to his. His eyes widen, as if just realizing how intimate that sounded, and he quickly lets go.
“I’m fine. Don’t you dare carry me.” That would be utterly humiliating. I try to stand again, but my legs wobble, my muscles too lax to cooperate. I sink back into the chair. Shit.
His jaw sets. He slides one hand underneath my thighs, braces the other against my ass beneath the wound, and lifts me onto my feet. “Let me walk you to your room, at least.”
“Fine,” I agree, only because it’s the best option between falling flat on my face and being carried off like a stolen bride. “But you’ll give Finnian the wrong idea if he sees.”
The joke must come out flat, because instead of laughing, he falls silent. We slowly progress down the hall, my steps growing flimsier. Desmond patiently waits as my numbing hands struggle to unlock the door with my key. He opens it for me. When I step inside, he doesn’t follow.
“Goodnight,” he says, reaching for my hand just long enough for his thumb to brush against the sensitive crescent on my wrist. The touch sends shivers across my skin, however brief it was.
As he turns away, I catch the door and blurt out, “It was a mistake.”
Desmond pauses. “Robbing the Snow-Shod’s?”
“Robbing anyone.” I swallow, letting the realization consume me. “I may be a tomb raider, but I’m not a thief. This life—” I dig the necklace out of my pocket and toss it to him. “I don’t want it.”
It feels like a weight has been lifted from my shoulders as Desmond catches it, dangling it before him. His head tilts, the warmth replaced by a discerning furrow of his brows. That scar on his chin catches the dim light of the oil lamps and shines silver.
“Try to send it back to the housecarl,” I plead.
He nods. “Did you find a difference in robbing the living versus the dead?”
That necklace could’ve been that housecarl’s family heirloom or a treasured gift from a lover.
She’ll miss it and will have to spend each day until death without it.
Yet a draugr, even with its glowing eyes and animated limbs, isn’t really alive.
“The dead aren’t affected by theft—they’re not even around to witness it. ”
“I agree with you in one regard. When the living are stolen from, there is always a consequence. One Avedoran mark could be the difference between a hot meal and starvation.” He pockets the necklace, then looks at me again.
“That’s why I had reservations about hiring this guild, but tomb raiding is an endeavor the adventurers’ guild would’ve turned down, even if they didn’t dismiss me at the door for being fae.
And Finnian personally vouched for Erickson’s crew. ”
I nod, hanging on every word as the painkiller starts to sap my consciousness.
“But Cynthia, never assume the dead can’t haunt this plane.” His eyes narrow with a warning. “They lurk in the shadows, more than anyone dares to believe. Robbing them still makes you a thief.”
“What do you—” My legs turn to lead, and I stumble, catching myself on the frame of my bed.
He lunges, grasping my arms to balance me. “Are you alright?”
“I feel like I’m about to pass out,” I admit, leaning into him as my eyelids grow even heavier.
Desmond reaches around me to pull back my quilt and sheets, then fluffs my pillow. “Get in.”
It dawns on me what’s happening, and I let out a tired laugh. “You’re not tucking me in.”
“Why not?” He arches one brow so perfectly I want to reach out and follow the curve with my thumb.
“You’re a prince!” I glare at him, but it’s tired and half-hearted.
He lifts me up, no warning or anything, just one arm under my thighs and the other bracing my shoulders. “And that’s a problem because. . ?”
He’s so warm. I melt into him, but only a little. “Then you can’t because you’re my boss.” It would be improper. Too intimate. As if I’m not already enjoying it.
The prince of the Hollowlands lays me down and pulls the sheets over me. “Hmm,” he muses, clearly unconvinced.
As he tucks them tight beneath the mattress, I try one last protest. “You’re. . . you’re you!” Someone too grumpy and engrossed in his book to talk to the woman he had just recruited. Someone who only joined a dance at Norwynhald to interrogate her.
For a moment, Desmond stills, lips parted like he’s holding back words he desperately wants to say. Then he swallows. “I still don’t see the issue, Cynthia. Unless you believe that the Prince of Death wouldn’t—”
“No!” I know where his mind is going, and I have to stop it. Even if my eyes are fluttering closed, even if sleep pulls at me. “You’re not the Prince of Death.” I hold his gaze, although every blink becomes slower. “I’ve known you for two weeks, and you’ve only killed one person.”
A surprised snort of a laugh bursts out of him, and a smile dimples his cheeks. It falls as he averts his gaze. “That doesn’t atone for the hundreds I have killed. Nothing can.”
Several long seconds pass, and everything is dark. I ball my hands into fists, forcing my eyes open again. His callused hand is right before me, gently brushing my hair out of my face.
“War doesn’t define you,” I whisper. “But your love for your people does.”
I think I see him tense, like the words have such a profound effect on him that he feels them through every marrow of his body. But I might be imagining it, because my vision darkens with sleep again. “I found the knives you left for me. They’re beautiful,” I murmur.
One last time, I fight my drowsiness to look at him.
He’s lingering at my bedside, looking at me with such wonder and adoration in his eyes that I know I must be dreaming. He’s left the room already, and all I’m seeing is what I wish I could.
That’s what I tell myself as sleep finally takes me.